Education Reform Group Mobilizes for 2014 Elections
Enlargegraphic by: Todd Wiseman
An education advocacy group that became a lobbying powerhouse during the 2013 legislative session with the backing of Texas tort reform heavyweights is now turning its sights to the upcoming election cycle.
Texans for Education Reform, whose legislative package included measures to encourage the growth of online education and charter schools, has formed a political action committee, according to filings with the state ethics commission.
The new committee will allow the group, which spent at least $645,000 on a team of 16 lobbyists during its first legislative session, to put some of its resources toward political candidates.
“We advocate legislation that will transform our schools through proven, innovative strategies and provide parents with flexibility and choice," spokeswoman Sherry Sylvester wrote in a statement emailed to The Texas Tribune. "TER PAC will provide us with another tool, in the political realm, to draw attention to our agenda and help achieve that goal."
Sylvester declined to provide additional information about the group’s political objectives, noting that further details would be available when the Texas Ethics Commission releases campaign finance reports later this month.
TER PAC’s treasurer is listed as Doug Foshee, who is the former CEO of El Paso Corporation, which was among the largest producers of natural gas in North America until another energy company acquired it in 2011. Foshee is also a trustee of the Houston-based KIPP charter school network.
He is one of many Texas political and business leaders who sit on the group’s board, including homebuilder and tort reform champion Dick Weekley, Texans for Lawsuit Reform PAC chairman Dick Trabulsi, former U.S. Secretary of Education Rod Paige and former Senate Education Chairwoman Florence Shapiro, a Plano Republican who stepped down in 2011. El Paso businessman Woody Hunt and hedge fund manager Salem Abraham, who is a longtime